The Daily Outrage: Alaska Vs. Starving Children

I consider myself to be a fairly optimistic person. I may not always seem like it, because I love to talk about bad news and am generally introverted and, shall we say, not cheerful, but I tend to think the best of things. I feel that as bad as things in this world are, we wake up each day with the chance and power to fix it. There are, however, times when a news story crosses my path that fills me with bottomless rage and despair for the human race. Most often these stories involve a major oil company, or Sarah Palin, but this one merely involves someone associated with Palin; her former lieutenant governor(and current Alaska governor) Sean Parnell.

Recently Sean Parnell vetoed a bill that would have increased funding to Denali KidCare by 2.9 million dollars, a move which would have covered an additional 1,300 children and 218 pregnant women. For those who don't know, Denali KidCare is a program that provides care and aid to children and expectant mothers in low income families. It's a program very dear to my heart, because it helped Amber and I immeasurably when Pandora was born. Amber lost her job early into her pregnancy, and was having trouble finding a new one when she would have to take maternity leave so soon. And, truth be told, neither of us wanted to both be working full time, so I picked up a couple extra jobs so Amber could stay home. I was, for a time, working three jobs. A couple days a week I would be working 20 hours a day, biking between jobs that were on opposite ends of town, and sleeping for a few minutes here and there in the backroom at work. And still I was having trouble making ends meet. Technically I should have been above the poverty line, but I could barely pay the phone bill, let alone afford the medical care Amber and my unborn daughter required.

With Denali KidCare, Amber was able to stay home through the last half of her pregnancy, and almost the first year of Pandora's life. We were able to afford regular checkups for the both of them with a family practitioner, and we never had to worry about having essentials like bread, milk, eggs, cheese, or pre-natal vitamins. Without Denali KidCare, I can't honestly say we would have been able to have all of that. It is a program that I credit for the fact that I have a healthy 6 year old tearing up my house. Surprisingly, I'm thankful.

So, why would Sean Parnell veto a program that provides such a desperately needed service to thousands of struggling children? Because he discovered that some of Denali KidCare's money goes towards 'abortion related services'. Some of you probably agree with this decision, or at the very least can understand why a republican governor up for re-election would take a stand on a topic sure to please his party. But here's the kicker; Denali KidCare only spends about .18% of their annual budget on abortions, or abortion related services. And that phrase, abortion related services, is important; the money spent went towards services like medical consultation, and counseling for women interested in abortion, and only covered abortions when medically necessary. Meaning, abortions would only be covered under Denali KidCare when the pregnancy threatened the life of the mother. And there's more: Denali Kid Care is legally required to cover medically necessary abortions due to a 2001 State Supreme Court ruling that stipulates any program providing medically necessary care cannot discriminate in the case of abortions.

But let's say that Denali KidCare did cover 'elective abortions'(whatever that means- I've never met anyone who wants an abortion), so what? What gives Sean Parnell the right to deny funding to a program that provides a helpful, and legal, service, simply because he personally disagrees with it? He's an elected official, not an arbiter of culture or values. This was not a moral decision on Parnell's part, this was pandering to his political party. But here he's radically misjudged the situation. He's standing up for his 'beliefs' against a program that not only doesn't violate those beliefs, but actively works to uphold them. Nobody wants an abortion; they're a final resort for people who see themselves as unable to care for a child. If low income expectant mothers have a lifeline in Denali KidCare, a program that would provide them with help when they most desperately need it, there would be remarkably fewer abortions.

This is an outrage, and Sean Parnell needs to hear from us on this. The State Senate also needs our input, as they are reluctant to override Parnell's decision. So I urge everyone reading this to email Parnell and our senators at the addresses listed below and share your feelings on the subject.

Addresses and phone numbers for all members of the Alaska State Legislature can be found here: http://w3.legis.state.ak.us/senate/senate.php

Sean Parnell can be reached here: http://gov.alaska.gov/parnell/contact/email-the-governor.html

And you can even find him on Facebook, here: http://gov.alaska.gov/parnell/contact/email-the-governor.html

Crazy Like a Fox

There was a joke in one of the early Simpson's episodes, a throwaway gag in one of those stories where they look into the future of the family, where Marge turns on the TV and says 'Fox made the transition to hardcore pornography so subtle I never even noticed.' I'm paraphrasing, because I haven't seen this episode in at least ten years, but it's a line that comes to mind several times a year whenever Fox makes some vicious attack against the very idea of intelligent programming or announces their newest reality show. This week I've been thinking about that line a bit more than would normally be considered average.

Now, Fox is the network that brought us the plastic surgery dating show The Swan, where two women we're given makeovers and cosmetic surgery, and one was ultimately told she was just too ugly and had to go home alone. And Temptation Island, which is the only show in history that could give you chlamydia simply by watching it. So I can't exactly say that their newest announcement brings them any closer to their goal of out and out pornography than those two examples did, but it certainly helps ensure their place in that new circle of hell Rupert Murdoch had built solely for Fox executives.

Fox has announced their newest reality show, Someones Gotta Go, which coldly capitalizes on the zeitgeist of the new American public. The broke, depressed, terrified-of-the-future American public. Each week the show will focus on a different small business, where the employees will try desperately to hold onto their shrinking 401K and meager health coverage by competing and backstabbing in reality show style, until at the end of the episode the loser is fired. Surely it won't be long before actual, literal executions make up the bulk of Fox's prime time lineup.

Also, Variety has a much more gushing report on this upcoming show(of course). They do their best to make this sound like a good thing, but if you read it through there a few other depressing notes about the show(the opening up of Human Resources files and financial reports is sure to cause friction long after the cameras leave the building).

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I don't want to step on the toes of the great Comics Curmudgeon(seriously, everyone follow the link and start reading, daily... it's funny stuff), but since he didn't mention this creepy creepy strip on his blog, I figured it would be fair game here.

The Family Circus, from the day before thanksgiving.



There are oh so many ways this can be twisted into something horrid and creepy, and absolutely no way that this can be taken as wholesome and religious, which is basically what Family Circus is from day to day.

Anyone still reading this? I'd love to get some alternate text for that panel.

Get Off My Intellectual Property!

I'm halfway interested in the new horror film Mirrors for a couple of reasons. The first is director Alexander Aja, who directed the stylish(but completely inconsistent and mindless) slasher chase film High Tension, and the remake of The Hills Have Eyes. I almost thoroughly enjoyed High Tension when I saw it in theatres, and felt that his Hills Have Eyes remake was technically superior to the original, but emotionally and viscerally not in the same league. The other reason is that the film's central idea is eerily similar to an idea I've been kicking around since high school.

As a teenager I had a dream where mirrors weren't just reflections, but windows to alternate universes that were almost perfectly identical to our own. They looked exactly alike, but I was convinced that people in that mirror world were living their own separate lives. I could only imagine what they were doing when I wasn't watching. In the dream it wasn't malevolent, but it's hard to deny the creepiness in that idea. So it's made it's way into several ghost stories I've tried to write, and I made it a concept in my long(and slowly) gestating haunted house script. It's not a close enough similarity to seem like more than a mild coincidence, and it certainly doesn't mean I need to change my story, but it is a bit irritating now that if I ever do make my movie, I'll have the inevitable comparison to contend with. Or maybe Mirrors will be forgotten by then. It seems likely.

Or, maybe the moral is that I need to get off my ass and do something.

Stay tuned...

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And I'm young enough to look at
And far too old to see
All the scars are on the inside
I'm not sure if there's anything left of me
- Blue Oyster Cult
Veteran of the Psychic Wars

The other day, as I travelled around midtown doing some errands, rocking out to BOC's Fire of Unknown Origin, those lyrics struck me. Not as incredibly deep, or moving, or even pretentious, but as highly... nerdy. And it hit me that that was a really big thing in the seventies. People like to credit They Might Be Giants, or even go back to Devo, as the progenitors of nerd rock, but really, it was people like Led Zepellin, with they epic songs about hobbits and elves and wizards, or Blue Oyster Cult with their rockin' singles about Godzilla, or the works of Michael Moorcock(the aforementioned song is narrated by a thinly veiled version of Jerry Cornelius). Hell, even Kiss and Alice Cooper fell into this category, only they were more spookshow oriented.

So if rock and roll in the seventies was all about mythology and fantasy, in the eighties it started to become about the myth of rock and roll itself. Bands like Metallica or Motorhead or even Bon Jovi started to take the focus away from 'isn't this cool and epic?' to 'aren't we cool and epic?'

And then come the nineties, where grunge came along and everyone misunderstood how close to arena rock these musicians actually were. It was, again, the focus that had changed. Grunge was about deconstructing the myth of rock and roll, it was about taking the focus away from the band and putting it back into the hands of the people. If that makes any sense.

Here's a story I read, that is both funny and sad. In the late eighties, Axl Rose of Guns 'N Roses apparently sensed some sort of camaraderie with Kurt Cobain, and he actually tried to get a project off the ground with the rising grunge superstars. You see, in Axl's eyes, they were two of a kind, both making a statement about the stale, corporate world of arena rock. They were both voices of their generations counter culture. But in Kurt Cobain's eyes, Guns 'N Roses were the precise form of cock rock they hated so much, and were so against.

That story made me laugh when I first heard it, but the more I think about it the more tragic it seems. Axl Rose had just been laughed out of the building by the voice of a generation, so of course he fired his band and has spent the last dozen or so years in seclusion, spiralling further into drugs and working on an album that will at this rate only be released posthumously.

Sorry, got off on a tangent there.

So if the rock in the 70s was about mythology, and in the 80s it was about mythologizing rock itself, then the 90s were about deconstructing all of that. That means that the 00's are all about looking back and trying to reclaim some of those styles that were rejected by other generations. Bands like the Darkness or Eagles of Death Metal are reviving the sex and glam of rock, while Tenacious D are handling the mythology front. Bands like The Strokes, The Killers or Franz Ferdinand and even Coldplay are bringing back 80s arena rock. And then you have Nickelback regurgitating all of the worst aspects of grunge.

A friend has a theory about music, and although he probably wont read this, I'll give Eric credit anyway. He says that every genre has three good decades. The first decade, it's unknown. The only people aware of it are the people doing it. In the second decade it's still unknown, but it's starting to catch on. The third decade is where it gets popular, and after that it's a slow assimilation into the generic world of popular music. It happened with country and bluegrass, and now it seems to be happening simultaneously with rock and hip hop.

These Pipes... Are Clean!

You've probably noticed the silence around here, and all I can do is apologize. It's an old song of mine, I know, to make excuses for my inability to keep anything close to a normal schedule of posting. Let's face it, I'm a procrastinator. I'll always err on the side of lazing about. And all I can do is apologize again. To you, and to me. We both deserve better. Well, it's my pleasure to say that the times might be a-changin'.

Primarily, two things have caused my output to slow from infrequent to downright rare. A host of smaller issues helped, but the two big ones were a couple of projects of mine. One was a music cataloging project I was undertaking, and which now appears to be finished. You'll be seeing a couple of tangentially related musings over the next few days. The other was my latest review for Spout.com, which you can read by scrolling down the page for a bit. I can't explain it, but that review was the hardest one yet, and I sat on it for almost a month before I just decided to sit down and write whatever came to mind in one sitting. It's not the review I'm proudest of, but I think it pretty accurately conveys my pleasure in the film and my inability to form coherent thoughts about it. Maybe that's a good thing. Now that that is out of the way, I can focus on more personal, and, frankly, more rewarding projects. I had a few gestating, but in order to force myself to work on the review, I refused to work on them too much.

Add to those issues a full time job, my daughter starting pre-school(it's her first time in any sort of daycare program... big changes), some visiting friends I haven't seen in a long time, and other friends leaving state for good, and I just haven't been keeping my end of this little bargain. Now, however, with the obstruction that was causing all of the work stoppage cleared, and with this little bit of throat clearing out of the way, I dive back into work, and you will hopefully be seeing the fruits of those endeavors soon.

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I can't speak for everyone, because I am, unfortunately, not able to read minds, but I'm going to assume that most people are like myself in that we all think in literal terms. I mean, we all think in words, sentences and paragraphs. I do this all the time, I'll think of something as if I'm composing a letter. It actually bothers me sometimes, because I'll actually get caught on a word and stumble around trying to complete the thought even though the thought was already fully formed in my head. I'm only assuming that this is how most of us view the world and compose our thoughts; with language.

Something that jumped into my mind for some unknown reason is; How did Helen Keller think? I don't mean to imply that Helen Keller could not think, or was mentally inferior to others(quite the opposite in fact), but I cannot at all imagine how her brain must have worked. To have to piece the world together without a picture to go with it or a language to express it in. Of course, eventually sign language came into it, but that's still a stumbling block for me. She wouldn't have had a visual image to think with, or words to compose. I can't conceptualize how she must have seen the world and how her thought process must have worked. She wouldn't have had a visual image to think with, or words to compose.

Fun With Scammers Pt. 1

A few months back I started getting phone calls, from a variety of numbers and names(turns out Automotive Warranty Service is the actual name), all out of state, that informed me there was a problem with my car's factory warranty. Well, this was puzzling, because at the time of the first call I did not have a car in my name, and I've never bought a car from a dealership(in fact, all the cars I've owned have been decades old). So naturally I just hung up. I got the same call a week later, and a few days after that, and so on, until finally I listened to the entire message. I could press 1 to talk to an operator, or I could press 2 to be put on their 'do not call' list. I pressed 2, which, it turns out, was a big mistake. Instead of getting a call every week or so, I began getting a call every day. Sometimes more than once a day. This has continued now for the past few weeks, and so eventually I pressed 1 to talk to an operator.

During my first talk, I was frustrated, and a little bit angry in the way I was speaking. I wasn't rude, or cursing at the operator, but I was noticeably agitated, so I could halfway excuse the person for hanging up on me. Not so the next day, when I calmly asked the person why I was getting calls when I don't own a car. She hung up on me too.

It's obvious this is a scam. I knew that from the time I got the first call. Anyone interested can follow this link to find a description of the scam and some really outrageous stories from people who unfortunately succumbed to the salespeople(including alleged retaliation for making a complaint with the BBB). But that's not the point of this post. From the moment I spoke to my first operator I knew complaining about this business would do no good. As soon as the bureaucracy catches up and begins to go after these people, they'll have changed their numbers and mailing addresses several times over. Phone/Internet/Mail scams are here to stay, it's up to us to be the ones to say no. So I've decided to have some fun.

I got two calls today. The first, asking to speak to a supervisor, I was sent to some bogus voice mail maze. The second surprised me, and I didn't have much prep time, but here's how it went down.

I was put on hold after asking to speak to an operator, and I got to hear the first two lines of Willie Nelson's On The Road Again several times before Mike picked up and asked for the make, model and serial number of my car. I, in as good natured a manner as I could, came back with 'Wow, I was on hold for awhile. Business must be good.'

There was a pause, and then 'yeah, we're doing pretty well.' It should be noted that during my previous dealings there was no pause, they quickly hung up on me or transferred me. I can only imagine that the pause came because politeness and joviality went against their programming. Like those robots in old Sci-Fi movies whose heads would explode when faced with some simple illogical riddle.

Still keeping the same jovial,purely-making-idle-chatter tone; 'ah, good. Stealing loads of retirement checks, then?'

Another pause; 'Sir? I don't think I understand you.'

'Well, how about you transfer me to a supervisor. Maybe he will.'

Another pause; 'What did you say? I couldn't understand you.'

'Well, I'll speak slowly; CAN. I. TALK. TO. A. SUPERVISOR?'

No pause this time, but a shitload of sarcasm; 'yeah, I understood that. Hold on.'

A click, some muzak, and then a dial tone. He'd transferred me, and then hung up on me.

It wasn't entirely clever, but I had no prep time. It did get my frustration out, and waste a few moments of their time, which kept them from earning anything. Tomorrow I hope to be better prepared, and I'm going to be keeping a log of my transactions. I'm going to see how long I can keep them on the line until they hang up in frustration.

So, anyone have any ideas? I know most of my friends are much better at screwing with telemarketers than I am(particularly Eric, who could go on for hours), but if anyone has any ideas I should use, I'd be much obliged. Check back tomorrow for more.

Nerd Alert!

With Final Crisis just around the corner, written by one of my faves Grant Morrison(even if I have been a little let down with his Batman run), and Geoff Johns doing a pretty spectacular job of reigning in the often convoluted and ungainly DC continuity, I'm finding it a pretty good time to be a DC fan. Especially with the awesome conclusion to The Last Son of Krypton, written by Johns and his former boss, Richard Donner. The story started almost 2 years ago, and the last we've seen of it were the words 'to be concluded in Action Comics Annual #11.' That was 13 issues ago, and the wait has been pretty frustrating. But with this issue, with it's grand cinematic scope(a cliche when talking about comics these days, I know), and incredible Kubert art, almost made the wait worthwhile. I only say 'almost' because a year is too long to ignore such a momentous series of events within the Superman mythos. But wait, there's some things here that don't add up.

The story started way back when, with the arrival of an alien ship containing a young boy who exhibits the exact same power set as Superman, and who speaks Kryptonian. Upset with the governments attempts to isolate and study the child, Superman kidnaps him, and has Batman draw up a paper trail that turns the new Kryptonian into Christopher Kent, a cousin of Clark. Lois and Clark adopt the kid, and all seems fine for about five minutes until Zod, Ursa and Non(of Superman II fame) show up, and it's revealed that Christopher Kent is actually Lor-Zod, General Zod's child with Ursa from their time in the Phantom Zone. Zod and an army of Kryptonian criminals(also from the Phantom Zone), banish Superman to said Phantom Zone, and enslave the Justice League, setting up their own kingdom in Metropolis. It's no spoiler to say the Supes escapes, and seeks Lex Luthor to help him use his expertise to take down some Kryptonians. Cue dramatic music and intriguing 'to be continued.' Flash forward about a year, and it seems that the story is now wrapped up. But wait, what about that year in between?

And here's the problem. For that year, the rest of DC continuity was moving forward, with no mention of the Kryptonian invasion of Earth, and Superman figured prominently in that continuity. Meaning that he was obviously not trapped in the Phantom Zone for all that time. It would make sense to assume that those stories take place after the events of The Last Son of Krypton, and yet it's clear from the final issue that this isn't the case. (SPOILER ALERT) For at the end of the storyline, young Christopher Kent sacrifices himself in order to trap the Kryptonian criminals back in the Phantom Zone, and he along with them.

And now we have a years worth of story lines involving Christopher Kent, adopted son of Lois and Clark. We get to see him learning how to use his powers, moving into a new super-swank apartment with his family, and even meeting and hanging out with Robin(something the last issue paradoxically mentions). What happens to all of these stories now? Did they happen? If so, when? The Last Son of Krypton storyline took place in such a short time frame that there's no room in there for the other adventures to have happened. Do they get retconned out of existence? If so, how do you account for the several references to those adventures that are littered throughout this latest issue.

It's things like this that turn people off of comics, in particular DC. While DC isn't any worse than Marvel at these things, Marvel at least doesn't tie themselves into knots quite so often. DC almost requires a PhD in comic book history to understand everything in their books, and glaring errors like this just confuse and frustrate the fans.

The shame here is that Geoff Johns and Richard Donner have had a pretty splendid run for awhile, and this Last Son Of Krypton storyline had some pretty awesome beats to it(Lex's Superman Revenge Squad, with a trained Bizarro, an upgraded Metallo and Parasite being a highpoint). Johns' encyclopedic Superman knowledge, with Donner's cinematic take on the character, made for some pretty awesome reads. If it weren't for the delays in the title, everything would have been fine.

Where They Play The Night Music

Several years ago, in my early twenties, following a seeming meltdown of my entire life(social, family and work), I fled the country, hoping what most people in my situation hope; that a change in scenery will bring about a more substantive change. I can't say whether or not that worked, but I did have a blast in London for a few months, and it did leave me with quite a few stories. I was only there for a few months, but I still like to think I 'lived' there, as opposed to 'vacationed' there. I say this because I did almost nothing that most tourists do. Sure, I went to some museums, wandered around and went to a few spots like Buckingham Palace or the Tower of London, but the majority of the time was just spent 'living'; socializing with some new friends and wandering around. Meeting new people and seeing new things. Most of my time was spent in a very crowded house in Harlesden Gardens on the outskirts of London proper, on a street that was just this side of 'ghetto'. I saw both my first full size, free range cockroach, and my first junkie injecting Heroin in Harlesden Gardens. Both in the same phone booth.

I went to clubs a lot in London. Well, not really a lot, but when you compare to my pre(and post) London average of never, I was a veritable club kid. OK, still not really. But I did go out fairly frequently with my flatmates. Hell, I even danced, which anyone who knows me will attest to being something I never do. It was part of that whole 'substantial change' thing I was speaking of.

Around 8 or 9 at night I would head to Notting Hill where my friend Asa(a tall, striking Swedish woman) worked at a Cafe Nero. After stopping off for the occasional bottle of Vodka and Orange Juice to avoid the outrageously priced club prices, we'd head to Trash via the Underground. Clubs in London are a lot different than the clubs I've seen in America. Basically each individual club was only open one day a week, with a different theme(and name) taking over the place each day. The club I liked the most was Trash, which played the wildest mix of music you could imagine, while leaning heavily on jangly Brit-pop. In between Morrissey and Pulp you would hear American tunes like Sweet Home Alabama. There was a joyous, communal feeling on the dance floor that I've never felt any of the times I've been dragged to a club here in America.

The doors would shut at 4 in the morning, and surprisingly at that time of night EVERYTHING in London is closed. I had imagined that London(in particular SoHo) would be bustling with activity and neon lights at night, but in fact the streets are quite empty. It's very eerie being on those well-lit streets, surrounded by immense buildings, with nary a sign of life to be found. Aside from the lights, of course. Asa and I would wait for one of the hourly double-decker buses, and make our way back to the house we shared with a dozen others, and life would be good. But before that, as the club shut down, they would play the traditional final song of the night; Dancing Queen by ABBA.

It may sound silly, but damned if that song doesn't now hold a special place in my heart. And perhaps that song was chosen for some ironic reason, something that people were really kinda laughing about. But I don't give a damn. At the end of the night, as soon as I heard that song start up, my immediate and continuing response was 'ABBA is the best band in the history of EVER!'

Another in the Continuing Saga of the End of the World

One of my favorite sci-fi/horror films, and based on a great Richard Matheson novel, The Incredible Shrinking Man remake had the potential to be a pretty fun film, with the right creative team at the helm. Of course, notice I used the past tense in that statement. The Hollywood Reporter broke the news the other day that there's a new director looking at this project, and it's none other than Brett Ratner, and the plan is now to turn the film into a comedic vehicle for Eddie Murphy, who apparently has had enough of fat suits and is planning on taking the other direction.

The only glimmer of hope is that Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant, of Reno 911! and the awesome The State, are the latest writers to take a stab at the script. Unfortunately, their absurdist, edgy humor will almost certainly be whitewashed by the increasingly pedestrian Murphy.

Really, there is nothing about this story that I'm happy about.

Send Me Your Mixes!

Earlier tonight I discovered the site muxtape.com, which is a super simple form of music sharing. Basically you upload up to 12 MP3s in your own customizable mixtape. You choose your URL("URL".muxtape.com) and then send it out to your friends for them to hear. It's super simple, and not really an essential activity, but it's a pretty fun timewaster. I spent some time on it tonight, and made a quick mix, and it really couldn't be easier. Which is also a bit of a drawback. There's no real organized way to search mixes, although there is a large, constantly changing list on the homepage. You can't download songs from another mix, only stream them, and so far there's no way to comment on someones mix. You can add it to a small list of your own private favorites, but nothing else. So really, the only way people can find your mix is if you tell them about it. Also, you can only have one list per account, but on the plus side you can always change it.

Here's my first mix, which is really nothing special. I basically threw up a few songs that were already on my hard drive. And I don't usually keep music on my computer, so the pickings were rather slim, mainly some oddities I had recently downloaded.

I encourage you all to make your own mix, and send the link to me. I love hearing people's mixtapes.

Garfield Minus Garfield

I think we can all agree that Garfield is one of the least funny comics ever to receive mass circulation. Garfield's sarcasm masks an entirely toothless, bland, inoffensive sense of humor. I guess it isn't horrible, but it's aggressively mediocre. Aside from that 'Death of Garfield' storyline(which is more a case of misinterpretation than anything else), there hasn't been anything in the strip to interest me since I turned 13.

That said, everyone needs to head over to Garfield Minus Garfield right now, where some glorious bastard had the bright idea to remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips. The result is a hilarious collection of non-sequiturs and maudlin self reflection as John putters around his house, talking to himself and occasionally going crazy.

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Well, let's see, it's been almost two weeks since my last post, which was a tiny, mini-review of Let's Go To Prison. It's been over a month since my last 'Tales From The Discount Bin', several weeks since I did my last 'weekly' comic book spotlight, and I can't even remember how long it's been since I actually reviewed a movie(Let's Go To Prison was more or less just some random thoughts I jotted down to keep the writing muscles limber). I'm going to offer an excuse, because it plays into the general train of thought I'm on, but for future reference, when you see a lack of updates on this site, you can rest assured that I'm either too busy, or too apathetic, to write. As much as I love doing this blog, I find that it's best served by me only writing when I feel like it. If I try to force myself to write something when I'm not in the mood, it tends to prolong the feeling of writer's block. But, there comes a time when you have to get right back on that horse. I have a few movies stacking up that I need to review for Spout, and a couple of projects I do want to get into eventually, and this may help to prime the pump, as it were.

So, what have I been up to in the last few weeks? Working, of course. My job is winding down at KTUU, and the fact that I'm now in my last few weeks before the automation robs me of a job may be adding to my general lack of interest in writing. I've been planning a vacation for mid-summer to Tennessee so that Amber can visit her father, and, oh yeah, I gots me a tattoo! Pictures will be forthcoming as soon as I can upload them. Pandora broke my digital camera, and frankly I've entered that unattractive scabbing & peeling period, and I should probably wait until that clears up before I show the world. Amber and I decided that, instead of diamonds on our 6th anniversary, we should get tattoos! It's something I've been pondering since I was 18, but I just finally committed to it. I think it's pretty baddass, and am VERY happy with how it turned out. And for the record, don't listen to anyone who tells you getting a tattoo doesn't hurt, or that it feels good. Those people are masochists. Or sadists who only want to see the surprised look of pain on your face as the needle starts punching holes in your skin. Imagine a continuous bee sting that you can't flinch away from. Still, it was an experience, and after awhile you stop feeling the worst of it.





The other big event that's been eating my time like nobodies business is Stephen King's Dark Tower series. After three tries, and over 15 years, I'm finally finishing the journey. In fact, I'm so close to the end that I'm fighting the urge to turn off the computer and resume the story, but I need to write something today, so here I am. The reason I've tried to read the series three times is basically due to the large gaps between releases. By the time the new books came out, I had forgotten most of the particulars of the earlier entries. It really was a form of self-torture, because I have come to the conclusion that most of those first 4 books are really goddawful. So why read them 2(or 3) times? Well, for the same reason I made myself finish Gregory Maguire's Wicked, or the Da Vinci Code; because no matter how bad it is, I can't turn away from a book(or series) once I've started. I'm in it until the end.

Perhaps it's because I read it in Jr. High, and everything your exposed to at that age holds some charm later in life, but The Gunslinger is still an enjoyable read. It's the next three books that lose me.

The Drawing of the Three, especially by the time I tried reading it for the third time, nearly threw me off the path of the beam forever. I enjoyed the hell out of the first half, where Roland wakes up after the endless night seen at the climax of the previous book, and begins to find doorways into 'our' world, where he draws three people to join in his quest. The first person to be drawn, Eddie Dean, was sometimes an annoying character, but he seemed true. I think that's because Stephen King had enough experience to get inside the head of a 20-something junkie, and was perhaps trying to wrestle with his own addictions through this character. The second character, Odetta Walker, was simply ridiculous. I buy that King can get inside the head of a strung out junkie, but I don't really think he has the life experience or imagination to get inside the head of a young black woman in the mid-sixties. Let alone a double amputee with schizophrenia dealing with racism in the civil rights movement. It's a problem King faces time and again. I get the idea that he really likes black culture, and he really wants to be 'down', but at heart he's an uber-nerdy white guy, which makes his endless attempts to seem hip and with it just sad and mildly amusing at best, and outright racist at worst. His attempts at writing for Black characters always slip into slightly stereotypical jive talk, or he employs the oft-used 'magical black man(or woman)' approach, where the African American characters are there mainly so that the white characters learn important lessons and defeat the baddies. Think of the old lady in The Stand, or Michael Clarke Duncan in The Green Mile, or even Halloran in The Shining.


It took me over a year to finish The Drawing of the Three this last time(I put it down for several months, unable to bring myself to jump back in), and then suddenly I was interested again and forced my way to the ending. The next book went quicker, but it took more determination to keep reading, and that's because the entire novel The Waste Lands seems like Stephen King is spinning his wheels. I guess it gets the characters from point A to point B, but so much of the book just goes nowhere, while King is apparently selling by the pound(a point King himself makes in the seventh book). Wizard and Glass is the favorite of many people, and while I enjoy the overall story, and it has a couple satisfying gunfights, it feels a little hollow to me. Probably I'm not used to Stephen King trying to be romantic, and it didn't feel natural. But, again, while this fleshed out Roland's back story, it could have been edited by a couple hundred pages and been stronger for it. And in the end it didn't further the story at all.

So imagine my surprise when I not only liked book five, The Wolves of the Calla, but loved it. Sure, it's a direct homage to Seven Samurai(or Magnificent Seven, take your pick), but it was just an overall fun read, with a quick-paced, intriguing story. The difference here, I think, is that King knew the end was in sight, and so wrote accordingly. The first four books he didn't know where to go, and so cast about aimlessly for awhile, but with the end in sight everything matters, and the books become eminently more readable.

Part of this is personal preference, on top of the aforementioned purposefulness. I'm a big fan of breaking the fourth wall in fiction, and Stephen King not only breaks the fourth wall, he brings it down like the Berlin Wall, putting himself into the story in a move that could seem egotistical(and sometimes does), but really gives the story a sense of weight and urgency. A lot of people cried shenanigans, but I dug it all. There are a few things he did that annoyed me, like naming the robot servants 'Dobbie' models, or 'House Elves' in slang, or calling the mechanical explosive balls 'Sneetches' and 'Harry Potter Models'. We get it, you loved Harry Potter, but naming fictional elements of a fantasy world for characters in that series is just silly. Others are more forgiving of this, because Stephen King has had elements of our world show up in the Dark Tower series from the get-go(the bar in the first novel contained several drunken cowboys singing Hey Jude), but the Harry Potter references were really, really stupid.

But those pale in comparison to his references to 9/11, which crassly imply that the terrorist attacks were real-world manifestations of his novels, or the fact that he name checks the man who ran him over as a servant of evil. I guess I'd be pissed too, but come on, this is a real guy, who made a stupid fucking mistake and had the bad fortune of making it with a world famous author.

I'm still a hundred or so pages from the end of all of this, and King always has trouble keeping his endings on track(remember the Stand? 800 pages of buildup only to have the literal hand of god come down and stop things at the last minute), but I'm hopeful. And if he pulls this off I'll happily reread the series AGAIN when he republishes them in a planned revised format that will eliminate any continuity errors and tie the books together better.

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Well, on Tuesday I wrote a 'review' of an older Kurt Busiek JLA issue, and spent a bit of time praising his work on Superman, and not it appears that's all about to end. At least for the time being.

Newsarama has an interview up today with Busiek where he discusses his Superman run, and his premature exit from the title. Issue 675 will be his last, which means there are only 3 issues to go. With a storyline still ongoing, we may not get to see that anticipated return of Paragon that he had promised earlier in the year.

It isn't all bad news, however. He's leaving Superman so that he can focus his energies on a top-secret title he's working on with Mark Bagley(artist of Ultimate Spiderman's first 100+ issues), and he has a Superman mini that will be coming out sometime soon, as well. Plus he says he has plenty of stories in mind if he makes it back to Superman after finishing this project.

Oh yeah, and he said earlier that Arrowsmith may be getting a sequel series. So there's a silver lining in there.

If your interested in the whole interview, which is a bit dry, follow the link.

Soundtrack to my Life

As I have mentioned more than a few times lately, I recently received a very massive iPod. So massive that I can put my entire collection on it, and still have room for a couple years worth of CD purchases(to be honest, I'm a bit ashamed that my entire collection fits so nicely on this one iPod). One of the great things about going disc by disc through my collection and importing them into a portable CD library is that I'm becoming reacquainted with some artists and albums that I haven't listened to in awhile. Some not even in this century. The usual question, and the one I've been asked by work friends who obviously don't know me well enough is 'why do you need all those CDs, if you don't listen to so many of them?' The obvious, logistical answer is that with so many albums in one collection, it's impossible to listen to them all regularly. But of course the real answer is probably the same one that would be given by anyone with a record collection in the triple(or quadruple) digits; these discs are important to me.


I know it isn't particularly enlightened, and we're all supposed to see material goods as nothing more than 'things', but if a house fire were to destroy my entire CD collection, DVD or book library, or even my collection of pop-culture memorabilia, I would be highly distraught. In the end these aren't family members, and so I wouldn't be devastated, but I am also more emotionally connected to my collection of 'things' than I think most people view as healthy. I can't yet explain it, as I've chosen not to closely analyze this compulsive collecting, but I think in the end I do agree with Rob from the novel High Fidelity; it's what a person likes that matters more than what a person is like. OK, a disclaimer; I don't follow that exactly, but I think the sentiment is a fairly close to how I view the world, good or bad.


People rarely show the outside world everything about themselves, and even the largest asshole you run into in the supermarket has hidden depths. The 'things' people buy can end up defining them in greater accuracy than a casual acquaintance could, if you know what to look for. And I think that's how I view my collection of CDs, books, movies and memorabilia. That after I'm gone, someone could sift through all of this stuff and know who I was, warts and all. They may not know that I have the admittedly lackluster Golden Earring album Cut on both Vinyl and CD because as a child my mom played that album during summer roadtrips across Alaska(this is also partly why I have so many Electric Light Orchestra albums, although the rest of the reason is because they rock!). There's no way someone randomly looking through my CDs would know that I own ABBA Gold because during a few months in London I would go to the club Trash every Monday with the Swedish woman I was staying with, and the final song every night was Dancing Queen. They played it ironically, I think, but I ended every night thinking 'this is the best song in the history of ever!' However this collection still traces the path of my life, my interests and my moods.


Everything I own has a story to go along with it, and a connection to my life that goes beyond what you might think. And although people probably won't get the whole story, my collection of 'meaningless things' forms as personal a roadmap of my life as any diary could be. If you know how to read it.

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Now, normally I'm a very nonviolent person. Despite what you may think of my reading or viewing habits, I normally go out of my way to avoid confrontation in real life. There is, however, one place in the world where this isn't true; the movie theatre. You probably could have guessed that from my review of the Kingdom. I don't know exactly why this is. Well, scratch that, I think I have a pretty good idea of why that is, actually.

I love going to movies. Movies are such a part of my life that seeing a movie in the theatre is almost like church. As technologically advanced as my living room setup gets, and as much as I enjoy lounging back on my couch while eating horribly fattening food, nothing beats being in the audience when the lights go down and the movie starts to roll. It can be magical, and it's always a good time for me. The movie may be utter shit, but that's not the point. The point is the shared experience. One of the best movie-going experiences in my life was Star Wars Episode One. I saw the very first showing in Alaska, and went right along with the crowd as they cheered. They cheered when the lights went down, they cheered when the Lucasfilm logo popped up, and they gave the opening title crawl a standing ovation! Everyone there was there to enjoy the film, and they completely gave themselves up to the joy of seeing this with a theatre full of like minded people. Of course, I went and saw it again with my family a week later, and I couldn't believe I'd been duped like that.

My point is, seeing a movie in the theatre is almost a sacred tradition with me, and I can't stand it when others don't give it the respect it deserves. Of course, I'm not alone in this; I'm probably the last blogger on earth to jump onto this bandwagon. People begin to treat the theatre as a large living room, talking on cell phones, talking to each other, and generally making an ass out of themselves and disturbing those few people left who seem to want to watch the movie.

Over the past couple years, my tolerance for this has dropped WAY off. I used to make do with passive-aggressive looks at the person behind me, hoping they would see my pointed stares and be shamed into silence. That never works. Now, though, I'm much more direct. If people don't shut up in the movie, I lean over and tell, not ask, them to politely shut up. If someone a few rows down won't stop playing with their cellphone, and the light keeps distracting me, I'll get up and go tell them. And, believe it or not, it works almost every time. I'd had a few sarcastic remarks, but they still shut up or put the cellphone away.

It's something I try and encourage my friends to do, because we need to reclaim our theatres. If movies are costing 10 bucks(more in other places, but in Alaska it's about 9.75 for a non-matinee show), why should we have to put up with distractions? For that matter, why would people pay 10 bucks a piece, and twice that probably when snacks are counted, to not watch the movie? Just tell them to shut up. Politely, though, that's probably a bit more unnerving to them.

[I have to mention this: either my spellcheck is getting stupider, or I'm actually getting a bit smarter. This post, and my last one, each had only one mispelling in it, and that was punctuation! Yay me!]

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Caught an episode of Ebert and Roeper this weekend, something I've gotten out of the habit of doing since Ebert took his medical leave. Roeper is annoying enough, but when he's paired with 'celebrity' guests and mediocre filmmakers, the sycophantic attitude and ill-defined criticisms are just too much to bear. So it's been awhile, and it took me a few moments to notice something was missing; the Thumbs.

Roger Ebert, left without speech after salivary cancer, owns the copyright to the use of the thumbs up/down gimmick, along with Siskel's widow. Disney and Ebert are in contract negotiations, and when the negotiations stalled, Disney yanked the Thumbs from the show, putting out a press release stating it was Ebert's decision. Ebert used his website(on which he's been reviewing movies again, thankfully) to state that he had allowed Disney the use of the Thumbs as a sign of good faith. I'm not sure what this means for the future of the show, although I can't imagine Disney firing Ebert from the show(Ebert does expect his voice to return as he heals).

Part of the reason I think his job is secure is the fact that Roeper just needs someone to slap him around every once in awhile. And on that matter, they may have finally found the perfect guest host, someone willing to loudly, jovially and vehemently disagree with Roeper, and openly mock is silly, silly opinons. Robert Wilonsky is a film critic I've never heard of before, although I've since read a few of his reviews online(there's a few available here). I can't honestly say whether or not I agree with his opinions, because I haven't seen any of the films he discussed, although I'd like to think he's woefully off the mark with his negative review of Across the Universe, a film I've been anticipating for awhile. I see he's been the gues for awhile, and he'll still be here next week, so I think I may start watching Ebert and Roeper again. Still, good critic or no, Wilonsky is the shot in the arm this show needs while it awaits the inevitable, glorious return of Ebert.

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During a news story about local schools, I just saw this printed on a high schoolers shirt:

"If you don't like my attitude, stop reading my t-shirts!"

That joins "You laugh because I'm different, I laugh because your all the same" to my list of unintentionally-ironic-statements-punishable-by-death, to be enforced once I finally rule the world.

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The Download is, I think, going to be a regular feature on this site. Just how regular I can't say yet. It's going to be a quick note or two that I jot down, usually just a random thought that I don't feel like expanding into a full-on rant or post. And sometimes it'll just be a goofy, silly idea or two.

I've come to the conclusion that Paris Hilton's popularity has less to do with attraction(I mean, she's obviously not physically attractive, unless you count that whole 'totally attainable, could pick her up at some sleazy bar' vibe) than with making ourselves feel better. People have held her up for perusal as proof that celebrities are awful people. We want to believe that money corrupts, that wealth and fame lead to absolute soullessness. It's a great lie we lower middle class citizens tell ourselves and each other to make ourselves feel better with our lot in life. And it's a great lie the wealthy like to perpetuate because it frees them of guilt. They aren't profiting while others suffer, why, they're martyrs!

I know I sound bitter, but really I'm not. Everyone wishes they had more money, and I'm no different, but I am pretty happy with my station in life. What bothers me is the so called 'cult of celebrity'. Paying so much attention to what a vacuous little socialite brat, a truly horrid little person, does merely because she has lots of money.